Half-Life
by Batman Lamp-Writer
Summary: I never really thought that my science classes would be helpful in regards to my ghost powers. After all, most scientists still don't even believe in ghosts. Then, we learned about the term half-life. Angst Day submission.


A/N: Yes, I'm alive, yes, I'm still working on fics, no, it's not likely they'll be posted any time this semester. It's my last semester of college, and it's trying to kill me, and my knee, which I had surgery on nearly four years ago, is acting up again. Yay, being back on crutches.

Anyway, here's my entry for DP Angst Day. I'll try to get back into writing my other stories, but I do apologize for the wait for them. I swear, they'll get done eventually….

**|-|4|_|= |_!|=3**

I never really thought that my science classes would be helpful in regards to my ghost powers. After all, most scientists still don't even believe in ghosts.

But then we got to terminology. You know what I learned? The prefix "ecto-" means "outside of". Thus, _ectoplasm_ is, in normal biology, the outer part of cytoplasm. In paranormal biology, it was used because paranormal scientists theorized that ghosts were only seen when they externalized their energy.

I started looking into how paranormal science and normal science overlapped. I kept finding more ways in which these researchers used a human science to relate to ghosts or aliens or other paranormal creatures. There was even one day that I wound up having a three-hour discussion with Jazz about parapsychology. I think I might've convinced her to take it up as a minor, even.

Then, we learned about the term half-life.

**|-|4|_|= |_!|=3**

It was a chemistry class in tenth grade when we first heard about half-life. I nearly had a heart attack, thinking they were onto me. After all, I was _living_ a half-life currently, literally half alive and half dead.

But the teacher simply continued on with his lecture and Sam nudged me to get me to pay attention again and calm down.

"What the hell, Danny?" she murmured to me. "Cool it, or you'll give yourself an aneurysm."

"R—Right, sorry," I stuttered. "He just… why'd they have to use the term _half_-life?"

Both Tucker and Sam shrugged apologetically.

"A half-life," the teacher continued, "is the length of time for a quantity to fall to half its initial value. In chemistry, we use this term mostly when referring to radioactive elements as they undergo radioactive decay. This is an exponential rate, meaning that the element or chemical being studied will never decay into nothingness as it is always only halved. Though a scientist will wind up with only minuscule amounts left, there will still be some trace left."

The class mostly just stared at the teacher, not quite getting it. Or caring. Actually, probably just not caring. I know I sure didn't, after realizing my secret was still safe.

Of course, I'd find out later that I really should've tried to understand it better. Not that it would help.

**|-|4|_|= |_!|=3**

It all started about halfway through that year. I remember 'cause Sam made the mention that it was almost time to see if I'd learned my lesson from Ghostwriter last Christmas. It was just a stomachache, at first, just this jolt of pain throughout my abdomen that lasted only a day or two. I just thought I'd reacted to some past-due food.

I wish it had been that simple.

It was barely a year after the accident. I'd just learned how the term half-life applied to me.

The next time was near Thanksgiving of our junior year. This time, the stomachache caused me to keel over in class, almost hitting my head on the way down, knocking a bunch of equipment off the lab table. I could barely hear the teacher yell at us, ordering someone to help me to the nurse and for someone else to clean up what I'd broken in my fall.

Arms supported me, and I blacked out at least once on the way to the infirmary. The nurse didn't know what to think. Nothing seemed wrong with me, yet I was in too much pain to move. She made the same assumption I had a year before, thinking it was food poisoning. She sent me home, telling me not to come back until the pain was gone.

I was out for a week.

In senior year, I made it past November without an incident, but then the first week of December was hell. I was nauseous all the time, hacking and coughing up vomit, barely able to eat anything, let alone keep it down. As my mysterious illness began to stretch into a second week, Sam and Jazz decided that research should be done.

They slipped some false leads about the ghost boy to Mom and Dad to get them out of the house, then, with Tucker's help, dragged me down to the lab.

Jazz and I knew how to work everything down there, of course. Mom and Dad had raised us knowing all sorts of lab protocols and safety, even going so far as to ensure that we knew each piece inside and out, including computers, lab equipment, and weaponry. Just don't tell Tucker that I actually know how to reassemble a desktop or he'll never let me live it down.

We got into the tests right away. Jazz took blood samples and had Sam swabbing my cheeks for DNA. Tucker stayed camped out in front of the computer, refusing to take part in anything even remotely resembling something done in a hospital.

Dozens of samples were pulled, ran through machines, spun in centrifuges, stared at under microscopes…. We used every single device we could think of.

Finally, Jazz came up from her position bending over a microscope. "I think I've got it," she said somberly.

The three of us paused for a moment, taking in the downturn of her lips, how she was barely restraining herself from biting her bottom lip, the furrow in her brow.

I managed to ask, "What's wrong with me?"

There was another long pause as she considered her wording. Then, she shook her head. "It's—It's bad, Danny."

I rolled my eyes. "Kinda got that from how crappy I've felt over the past two weeks, Jazz."

"No, Danny, it's _bad_," she stressed. "Your—Your body's—" She shook her head again, sighing before staring me down. "Your ectoplasm is decaying. There's maybe a fourth left of what you started out with after the accident, if that. Danny, your body has become _used_ to the ectoplasm being there, helping you to still function after being blasted with all that electricity from the portal turning on. Without it…."

We all went silent, thinking over the ramifications of what Jazz had said. I was the one who broke the silence.

"Without it, I'll die."

**|-|4|_|= |_!|=3**

We traced back the times I'd had that pain. Sure enough, senior year was my third, so we estimated that my ectoplasm's half-life was approximately one year and that I only had about twelve percent of what I'd started with. I also started noticing other things that had changed, mostly things that had been getting progressively worse without my realizing it.

I had headaches a lot, sometimes bad enough that I needed complete silence and darkness in order to get relief. Any super strength my powers had initially given me was fading. It took twice as long to beat back ghosts as before, and often times I wound up being on the ropes, nearly destroyed by my enemies if not for Sam, Tuck, and Jazz's help. The speed healing that had gotten me out of explaining injuries to my parents was all but gone, leaving me limping for weeks after a run-in with Skulker, not exactly something that I could easily hide. It was difficult for me to focus any more, my mind seeming to buzz when my attention drifted, causing long periods of time where I couldn't remember what I had said or people had said to me. I was back to failing classes just because all the information I sat through didn't stick with me.

All I could ever seem to think about was the decay of my ectoplasm. If things were this difficult now, how bad would it get when I was down to five percent? Two? Less than one? So far, the only idea we'd had for replenishing the ectoplasm in my body was to inject me with pure ectoplasm, but it seemed that version had a much shorter half-life than the kind I was infused with during the accident. Whereas mine had taken a year to decay, the pure stuff started vanishing after just a day or two.

Made me realize the true reason why ghosts only come to our world for a short time. If they stayed longer, they'd fade away.

After making that connection, I decided to see if I could recharge myself the way other ghosts did, by going into the Ghost Zone.

It didn't work. In fact, it might've been the stupidest thing I'd ever done. Not only did it not work, but it caused another half-life to pass, dropping my store of ectoplasm to drop to a mere six percent.

I came back gasping and twitching from the pain and weakness.

Jazz tested the ectoplasm in my body against the stuff pulled straight from the Zone. Turns out that mine mixed with my blood, which is what lengthened its half-life in the first place. Exposing it to so much of the pure stuff accelerated its half-life nearly to the speed of normal ectoplasm when faced with Real World conditions since I was still considered a Real World being.

Made me wonder how Vlad was still around and powerful.

**|-|4|_|= |_!|=3**

I made the mistake of actually going to his lab. Yes, it was stupid, no, I didn't think to check if he was around first. I was starting to get desperate, not sure if the acceleration would now be permanent, no longer sure of when the next attack would hit, when the ectoplasm in my body would wither itself away.

My rummaging around in his lab apparently woke him up. He came down, hands blazing with charging ectoblasts, but I had long since lost the strength to stay in ghost form. My wide, panicked blue eyes met his red, pupiless orbs, and something caused him to power down.

"Daniel?" he asked, looking me over in surprise. "Why are you here?"

And I don't know why, but I told him everything. About my powers leaching themselves away, about how my health was going with them, how terrified I was that I'd just not wake up one day or even end up catatonic or comatose….

He took it all in stride, for once dropping the smug and smarmy I'm-so-much-more-than-you'll-ever-be attitude. When I was done, he merely nodded. "I see. Well, Daniel, I must admit, I've never had this problem. I wasn't inside the portal when it turned on like you were. The ectoplasm I was hit with didn't infuse with me as yours did. My powers are purely due to my initial exposure. Yours, yours were a part of you, the ectoplasm merging with your DNA to create your ghost half. I doubt there's a way to replenish that ectoplasm without, well…."

I was hanging on his every word, so eager for a cure that I didn't care what I needed to do. "What? What can I do?"

He blinked at me, almost appearing to have forgotten I was still there while lost in thought. "You'd have to reenact that accident."

**|-|4|_|= |_!|=3**

Sam never knew that, when she wished away my powers, all Desiree could get rid of were my memories. She locked my powers up with my memories of having them, of being friends with Sam. So, really, I'd already been through the accident twice.

I figured a third time couldn't make anything worse.

Of course, I also knew my friends wouldn't see things that way. I waited for a day when Jazz was away at college and both Sam and Tucker had family events. Then, I simply let it slip to Mom and Dad that there had been a ghost at school that morning, and I had the house to myself.

I took careful steps down into the basement, knowing I'd need to be quick but not quite wanting to experience being electrocuted again. I stood before the portal for nearly ten minutes before I reached over to unplug it. Then, I stepped inside and hit the off button before plugging it back in.

Just as it had when Mom and Dad first displayed it to Jazz and I, the portal sparked but died. I took in a deep breath, knowing what I was about to do.

I stepped into the portal, took another glance around the lab, seeing it as it had been three and a half years ago when I had first gotten my powers. It had been the last thing I'd seen as a full human, and now….

Now, it'd be the last thing I'd see.

I slammed my fist into the on button, hearing the portal begin to hum with energy and squeezing my eyes shut. I didn't need to see the glowing green energy to know it was racing towards me from the depths of the portal, didn't need to look to know I was about to be hit again.

Within a second, I was on fire. My body burned, spasming as it tried to deal with the volts of electricity being channeled through me with every passing second. Then, it all went wrong.

My hands slipped from the wall, and I felt myself fall. Before I even hit the ground, I was screaming, the spasming getting worse as something was coming _out of me_. I could feel the steam oozing off my body, smell it around me, something metallic and _wrong_.

It slithered into my mouth as I screamed, and I tasted that bitter iron flavor of blood. This third shock was too much for my body. My blood sizzled away, my muscles seizing, my arms and legs curling in as I lost the ability to think. Everything was shriveling up inside of me, fading away, being eaten away by the electricity that had made me so strong before.

And then, it all just _stopped_.

**|-|4|_|= |_!|=3**

The funeral was closed-casket. No one wanted to see the mangled, shriveled corpse inside, one that had been fried to the point where it was practically mummified. Friends and family sobbed, acquaintances not quite sure what to think, past bullies horrified at what had become of the boy they harassed.

It was declared suicide, though there was no note. The police couldn't find any evidence of foul play, and the determination was that he'd willingly gone inside the machine and turned it on. Suicide was really the only explanation that made sense, even though nothing else about the death did.

But four people among the audience knew that it was truly an accident, an attempt to gain back something he'd lost.

And in the end, he'd lost everything else.

**|-|4|_|= |_!|=3**

A/N: Not really how I'd wanted to end it, but meh. Read and review, please.


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